<b>From college_trad3r:</b>
<b>there is no winning trading strategy.</b>
Trading is more about luck than hard work.
Hello ET, thanks for the welcome.
I do not share your conclusion. Strategies change, but the ability to change your systems with the market is one mark of a professional trader, as opposed to one who merely finds a workable system, and rides that system until either the system breaks, or the market changes and ends the profitability of the system. A trader must own their system in design and application, or that system is no better than any other system sold by gurus and third-parties to unsuspecting traders. If you did not make the system yourself, you can neither fix it or change it to adapt when the market changes. And it does.
Hard luck cannot be quantified, but random instances can be, as to their frequency. Probability is the name of the game, and plays a role in every trading system out there. A million individual traders pushing buttons on their platforms make the market, at least in the emini futures, a market imbedded in the human psyche, subject to all the emotional manipulations people feel. Lawyers charge hundreds per hour because they are expert guessers at what a judge or jury would conclude about the body of a case. The same is true of a professional trader, and the ability to expertly judge what the market will do can only come from hours in the market. No number of trading books will prepare you for trading. If you are truly a college student who has taken up trading, is it possible you simply need more experience in the market before trading cash? How well do you handle distractions, people and other priorities pressing on your day?
May I suggest that traders using someone else's system, via guru/chatroom/signals/etc. are riding a timebomb, with an detonation date unknown to the trader. That is neither sustainable practice nor prudent financial planning. May I also suggest that unless a trader can design their own system, from nothing or based on elements of others' systems, and learn how to replace elements as needed to adapt profitably over time, that trader is both a blown account waiting to happen and a broker's prize client.
To the OP, if your conclusion is based upon frustration, may I suggest taking an extended vacation with your fingers off the platform completely.
Happy trading.